Learning to Heal Through Growth

August 10, 2017

Taking One Step Forward: How to Not Look Back

Life is like a bridge. It’s made up of two parts, a foundation to walk along and the support that holds it up. Some bridges are concrete solid. They’re sturdy, reliable, and always shows you how easy the path will go if you follow it. Other bridges are like the wobbly planks overseeing a long fall grotto, held up by a few strains of rope and a bit of faith. No matter what kind of bridge you’re on know that they all hold the common and inevitable truth of one’s journey. You are going forward.

And now you might be thinking, well hey, sometimes I just stop by the bridge, take in the scenery, and go home. I’m not going forward in this case. Okay, no you’re not physically going forward but you are crossing the bridge in some way in order to achieve a goal. The goal in this scenario was to look out into the world and accept it as is, then return to your daily duties. Life is like that. We don’t always move forward -even when we should.

Let’s look at a couple scenarios. If you can, try to remember the most rebellious phase of your life and set all those memories at the start of the bridge. For those of you who didn’t rebel (and your parents thank you for it) take the most difficult experience that you are having right now and set it on the bridge. Now take the first step and ask WHY AM I ON THIS BRIDGE? WHAT AM I WALKING AWAY FROM? Keep walking until you find the answer. When you find it, ask this next question: why did I react that way? Is that really who I am?

Keep walking.

The next few steps are not for you to boggle the mind with why but to accept the outcomes. Accept what has just happened and what did happen exactly…well that that’s the first step in your journey. The point of walking along this bridge is not to figure how to fix the past but to learn from it. To understand that what just happened either diverts from or pushes you towards becoming a freer and truer version of yourself.

Last question. Do you want to turn around?

At this moment, you might get the urge to say yes, to turn around, and change what was already done. But what if the bridge you’re walking on fails. What if it trembles beneath you, giving way to the rocky earth and harsh waters below. What if the wind pushes you off and you get stuck within the rubble. Can you turn back now? No. There’s no way and besides… you can’t. The bridge has collapsed behind you. Right now you’re heart is racing, rushing blood to all parts of you until your head fills up with an encyclopedia of frustrations and die alone scenarios. In reality you’re only left with two possible options.

Option one, you stay on the crumbling bridge, internalize its demise into your own and submit to the inevitable defeat. Don’t even think about moving now -it’s too late.

Option two, you get the hell of the bridge, by any means necessary.

See we sometimes believe that we can go back in time and resolve the issues as if they didn’t happen or that if we change the effect, it will change the result. We believe that in order to make life lighter we have to go back into the dark, with all our past notions, try to fix everything, learn nothing, and come out as a better person. In truth, only answer to solving the questions we had before is to walk forward and ask our inner selves because that’s where the path becomes clear. You left your old baggage, doubts, fears, insecurities, anxiety, unresolved issue at the start of that bridge. The end of the bridge will be the most invigorating and life changing step that you make. Because your past is not who you are nor where you will be in the future. The start of your future begins now, when you stop holding on to what can no longer progress.